Being Jenny
I have seen a lot of stories about boys being feminized by their
mothers, or occasionally by their aunts. And I've even read a few
about men being feminized by their wives. These stories are okay,
but for someone who actually was brought up as a girl, they don't
ring true. So I'm writing this account, in the hope that people
can see what it's really like when a boy is brought up as a girl.
You won't find any coercion here; I was a willing--no, an eager--
subject, as I think must always be the case when this happens in
real life. And I'm afraid you won't find much sex, either.
I.
My life changed from hell to heaven when I was seven years old.
I was a little kid, and weak, and not aggressive; and the other boys
picked on me unmercifully. School was hell for me, and even my own
neighborhood was hell. I used to come home in tears almost every
day, until finally I couldn't take it any more and rarely left our
house except for school, which was unavoidable. For companionship,
I played with a neighbor girl instead of boys.
That Summer, we were about to move to a different town, and one
evening my mother sat me down and asked me the question that was
going to change my life.
She was embarrassed, and very ill at ease, and it took her a long
time to get to the point. But here, in essence, is what she said:
"Jimmy, you've had such a terrible time living here, and I've felt
so sorry for you.. If I had a nickel for every time you've come home
in tears, we would be able to *buy* our new place. And I've been
trying to figure out some way of protecting you or for keeping this
from happening. I've only been able to think of one possibility."
She hesitated. Then, "You used to play with Sally next door until
they moved. Do you remember...the day you were playing with Sally
and she put you in one of her dresses?"
"Oh, Mom, that was her idea! I never...."
"No, there's no problem. Yes, I caught the two of you, both of you
in dresses and playing with...what was it? Her tea set? Yes. But
you know, what I remember about that afternoon was not so much your
embarrassment when you saw me watching you, but how peaceful and
contented you were before you saw me. Yes, you were upset because
I was watching you, but I had been watching you for almost five
minutes, and up until the moment you saw me you just seemed....
Well, I can't remember a time when you looked so serene."
"Well, we were sort of...." I trailed off, at a loss for the right
word.
"Relaxed? At ease together? I thought you were. I liked watching
the two of you. You seemed so calm and happy, the only time you've
ever been happy except when you were home here with me. And...I
don't know, I've been thinking about this, but still it sounds so
crazy when I mention it, but...I wonder...have you ever wondered
what it would be like living as a girl?"
I had, as a matter of fact. I'd better explain this, so you don't
get the wrong impression. I didn't dislike being a boy. I didn't
dislike having a boy's body. At seven, I still had only the vaguest
notion of the physical difference between boys and girls, but if I
had known more, I would have wanted to keep those boy parts, at
least back then.
But I hated the life I had to live as a boy. We never talked about
"sex-role stereotypes" in those days, but if we had, that's what
I would have objected to. The insane, compulsive machismo. The
nearly constant violence. The disdain for every kind of activity
except athletics. The strong back; the weak mind.
And yes, sometimes, on really bad days, I would go to bed and pray,
"O God, please make me into a girl." But I was praying for relief
from the masculine stereotyping and abuse that tormented me, not for
a different body. Not back then. It wasn't so much not being a boy
as not having to live as a boy. That would change later on, as I'll
relate, but that's how it was then.
Okay; now we've got that straightened out, I'll get back to my
story. In answer to Mom's question I said, Yes, I had thought of it
and sometimes wished for it.
"It's been so awful that sometimes in my prayers I've asked God to
turn me into a girl," I told her.
Her eyes widened. "When you put on Sally's clothes, did you like
them?"
I nodded.
"You've put on some of my underwear once or twice, too, haven't you?
I could tell. Did you like that?"
I should say that, ever since my father died, Mom and I had been
very close. Most boys would have been petrified if they had been
putting on panties on the sly and their moms had confronted them
like that. But we were always on such easy terms, I simply said,
"Yes, they felt good. I just hope I didn't disturb them too much."
"Nothing but a few pieces out of place, Dear. But here's what I'm
driving at. We're moving away, to a place where nobody knows you.
So it's a place where you could make a fresh start, if you wanted
to. A really fresh start. And I've wondered whether this might be
a good time for you to live as my daughter instead of my son. It
would solve so many of your problems.
"You know I love you, Jimmy, and I love you for who and what you
are. But I can't stand seeing you miserable. Maybe if I could turn
you into a girl--if I could grant that prayer of yours--I don't mean
for good, I mean just temporarily, just for a few years, those years
when boyhood is so nasty--maybe you would grow up into a happier
person afterward. Not scarred for the rest of your life by all that
nastiness. And I do so want you to be happy."
You see what I meant about a change from hell to heaven. It took me
no time at all to make up my mind; I had made it up while she was
talking to me about the possibility. I said Yes, and I think she
saw the light in my eyes when I did so.
But she was cautious. "I think you should try for a couple of
weeks, or maybe a month, starting now, before we go," she said, "so
you can see what it's like. I won't want you to do this if you
don't like it. But I can get you a dress to try wearing, something
that will really fit you. It's Summer; you don't have to go to
school; you hardly ever go outside anyway. So maybe you could just
try dressing as a girl, around the house, until we move. In fact,
that will give you two opportunities to change your mind, the first
one when we move. If you think you like it, then we can finish out
the month after we've moved and then make up our minds about whether
you'll continue. And if you decide you don't like it...well, we'll
hope you find nicer boys in our new place."
The idea had caught on in my mind. I was half listening to her and
half contemplating the new possibilities her proposal had opened up.
And the more I thought about it, the better I liked it. In fact, I
was surprised to realize how much it appealed to me. Mom was being
so careful not to pressure me; but I was sure I would like it, and
my only regret was that I wouldn't be able to dress up as a girl
right away, right that evening, but would have to wait until
to-morrow for Mom to get something for me to wear.
I thought about this some more when I went to bed, before going to
sleep. This was going a genuine adventure, I realized. This wasn't
just *playing* at being a girl, the way I might play at being a
policeman or a pirate or an airplane pilot. This was going to be
real, doing something with my life, experimenting with it. And it
wasn't just something in my own mind; dresses and panties (panties!
...gosh!) were things that had an objective, material existence out
there. They weren't even costumes. They were real clothes, and I
was going to wear them.
What would I call myself? As a girl I'd have to be something other
than Jimmy. I lay in bed, considering the possibilities. I wanted
something that sounded frilly and feminine. Not just plain Mary or
Martha. Cheryl?...Madeline?...Stacey? The girl in school who wore
the prettiest dresses was named Lorelei. H'mm, how about Lorelei,
in honor of the pretty dresses I was going to wear? Nope. Too
risky. Suppose we bumped into each other some time...I could just
hear Mom saying, "Lorelei, this is Lorelei." Too silly. Finally I
had it: Somebody (was it our teacher in school?) had told a story
about a sad ballerina named Giselle. (I had somehow missed the
crucial point that Giselle was the name of the character, not of the
dancer herself.) I pictured myself in tights and a tutu with the
name Giselle. That was it. I would be the Sad Ballerina Giselle.
The next day Mom came back from shopping with an armload of
packages. She had obviously gotten more than just one dress. I
was beside myself with excitement. THIS WAS IT!!! My escape into
femininity was at hand. And sure enough, instead of taking the
packages into her room, as she would have done ordinarily, she took
them into my room, and we unwrapped them there.
Little girls' panties. A little top (I was still too young for a
bra). Little white and pink ankle socks. A skirt. Some blouses.
Another skirt. A yellow dress trimmed with white lace. And a pair
of little girl's shoes.
Slowly, my hands trembling with excitement, I put the things on. I
chose the yellow dress for my debut as a girl. Boys wore their hair
fairly long in those days, so Mom only had to comb it back and put
a yellow ribbon in it. Finally she was done fussing over me, and I
looked in the mirror. I thought I made a pretty convincing girl, as
long as the person looking at me had never seen me as a boy.
Mom gave me a little kiss. "My little girl!" she exclaimed.
"What's your new name, dear?"
I hesitated. Suddenly, "Giselle" seemed ludicrously exotic for the
simple, pretty American girl I had become.
"Well, come on, sweetheart. Surely you've thought of a name for
yourself. You can't go on being Jimmy, now, can you?"
I didn't have a name to fall back on. Finally, my hands behind my
back, my eyes downcast, in a tiny voice--a little girl's voice, if I
had realized it--I whispered, "Giselle," and turned red as a beet.
One of the reasons I love Mom so was that she never laughed at
me. And even then, with this absurd answer, which, even now, I'm
embarrassed to remember, she didn't laugh.
"That's a lovely name, dear," she said, "and if that's the name you
want to take, then we'll do that. But you must remember you're an
American girl, not a European one, and people may find you a little
more...well, convincing...if you have a plain American name."
"No, Mom," I replied. "Giselle was a dumb idea. Let me think about
it some more." I had no idea what I would come up with.
"All right," Mom answered. "For the time being, I'm going to call
you Jenny, which is pretty close to Jimmy. And once you've settled
on a name you want, we'll change it then."
As it turned out, I never did think of a better name. In fact, I
was too busy being a girl to worry about details like names, so from
that day, the 20th of July, I was Jenny. Jimmy Taylor had been born
on the 14th of December, but Jenny was born on July 20, and from
then on I thought of July 20 as my birthday. That fact alone should
have been enough to tell me I was going to be a girl for keeps.
II.
On my first full day as a girl, I woke up early--about 6 AM--and
then, remembering what I was to do that day, I was too excited to go
back to sleep again. I hadn't felt like this the times Sally would
put me in a dress when we played together. This was going to be
different; this wasn't going to be just playing at being a girl. I
kept watching the clock as it inched toward eight, my usual hour for
getting up.
At seven thirty I couldn't wait any longer. I got up, took off my
pajamas, and then looked over the modest assortment of things Mom
had gotten me. Should I choose these panties, or those? What a
luxury, what a delight, actually to have the choice, actually to be
allowed, and in fact expected, to put on panties! I chose a pink
pair.
This was to a month's trial, to see how I liked living as a girl.
But as I put on the panties--oh, gosh! how soft they felt! how
smooth on my legs!--I knew that, for me, the trial was already over.
If this was what it was like to wear dresses, I was all set to wear
nothing else for the rest of my life. Just then I remembered how I
had once prayed for this moment, and on a sudden impulse I dropped
to my knees, still with only my panties on, and folded my hands.
"Thank you, God," I said. "Thank you for making me a girl."
(Years later, a wonderful Jewish girl who was my dearest friend told
me that every orthodox Jewish man thanked God every day for being
born a man instead of a woman. I said, "You'd never have caught me
doing that!")
I chose a light blue blouse and a plain denim skirt. I thought Mom
would be pleased that I had selected matching colors and that I had
not picked anything too dressy for day wear.
I put on a pair of ankle socks and the shoes. Then I looked at
myself in the mirror. It seemed to me that I looked a little less
convincing than I had the night before.
There was still half an hour to go before breakfast, so I spent the
time rearranging my dresser drawers, pushing my regular boy's socks
and underwear out of the way and putting in the girls' things Mom
had gotten me. Then I did the same in my closet. As I hung up the
other skirt Mom had gotten me, I realized that I was going to need
skirt hangers. For the time being, I just folded the skirt over an
ordinary hanger and carefully hung it up.
Mom was pleased when she saw me at breakfast already dressed as a
girl. She gave me a light kiss and said, "How's my pretty daughter
this morning?"
My heart leapt up. "Your daughter is feeling just great, Mom!" I
answered with a hug and a kiss.
Breakfast was filled with happy talk about my new life. I told her
how good I had felt getting dressed that morning, how impatient I
had been to begin, and how I had spent the extra time putting away
my girls' things and hanging up my new dress and skirt.
"You actually put your own clothes away?" she exclaimed. "You've
never done that before! If I'm not going to have to pick up after
you the way I used to have to pick up after Jimmy, I'm never going
to let you change back!"
But after breakfast we settled down to work, and I began to learn
how much more there was to being a girl than just wearing a dress.
The first lesson was walking--how to walk like a girl. Smaller
steps. Weight less heavily on the heel with each step.
"When you're old enough to wear heels, Dear, you're going to have
to learn to put toe and heel down almost together. So you might as
well get ready for that right now."
As I walked back and forth across the living room floor, I thought
about wearing high heels. And that made me think about wearing
nylons, too. What a terrific adventure this was going to be!
Next came sitting down. How to approach a chair. How to sit down
in it. How to smooth my skirt so it wouldn't get wrinkled. How to
cross my legs so men couldn't see up it.
"The real test is going to be how you look when you aren't wearing
a dress," she pointed out. "Suppose you put on blue jeans and a T
shirt, with sneakers. Girls wear things like that. When people see
you that way, are they going to think you're a boy or a girl? You
can't fall back on your clothes then. You have to move like a girl;
you have to act like a girl; you have to think like a girl. If you
just wear dresses, you're only being a girl on the outside. If you
don't want to be caught, you must be a girl from the inside out."
"Now run, Dear. Start in the kitchen and run all the way out to the
foyer."
I set off at a run. Mom stopped me.
"Not that way, Jenny. That's the way a boy runs, pumping your arms
back and forth. Hold your elbows in and your hands out--" she
demonstrated "--and keep your balance by waving your forearms from
side to side. Your elbows should be almost still as you run."
As she explained this, images of all the girls I had ever seen
running sprang to mind and I realized she was right. It was tricky,
running that way, and it felt completely different. This was going
to take work.
"Now, Jenny, here's your homework," she said. "I want you to
practice walking, running, sitting down, and standing up. Do that
for at least an hour this afternoon. And every time you sit down,
here or in your room, remember you're a girl and remember how I told
you to do it. Okay?"
It was just about as okay as anything could get. I saw how much
more there was to being a girl than just the clothes, and I realized
that the more deeply I managed to feminize myself, the better it
would be. I sauntered around all day, trying to remember all the
details about holding myself and moving.
III.
So that's how it started. I think back now and bless the memory of
those bully boys who, unknowingly, pushed me into being a girl. Mom
had planned on a month's trial, but it wasn't going to take a month.
I knew this was what I wanted the very first day.
This kind of thing works only when the chemistry is right. I
realize now that Mom had secretly hoped for a little girl instead
of a little boy. And, at some deep-seated, unrecognized level, I
wanted to be a girl, too. It had been more than just the bullying
by the other boys; that had only been a trigger. So once the
possibility was opened up to us by circumstance, it was inevitable
that we would do what we did; we snapped into our respective roles
like a couple of magnets brought together.
When my dad had died, he had left a pretty good estate. We weren't
rich by any means, but as long as we were careful and lived on a
modest scale, Mom didn't have to work. And that was the key to the
second part of her plan.
"I'd like to keep you out of school altogether, Jenny," she said one
morning, "so you can keep on being a girl. I can do that provided
I teach you myself. It's known as homeschooling, and I've been
reading up on it. So IF you'll be a serious pupil, and IF you work
hard and don't fool around, and IF you don't whine when you have to
study boring things, and IF you don't try to take advantage of me,
then you won't have to go to school at all, at least not until high
school and maybe not even then."
Not having to go to school...! I had been dreading school. A
month's trial was all very well, I had thought, but I hadn't been
able to see how I could go back to school as a girl. Now Mom,
wonderful wonderful darling Mom, had found a way that I didn't have
to go back at all. All those IFs...if she had told me I would have
to work in the salt mines in order to avoid school, I would have
jumped at the chance.
She went on. "It will mean extra work for me, teaching you as
well as doing housework. So I'm going to ask you to help with the
housework while we do this. I'll try to pick girly chores for you
to do, the things you would have been doing all along if you had
been born a girl. Those can be part of your training."
Once we had moved, Mom made the formal arrangements for home-
schooling, and the day they were complete we had a celebration. It
was another milestone in my life as a girl. I had already started
living full time as a girl, but this was the point when we decided
the trial was a success--well before the month was over--and that I
decided was going to keep on being a girl, at least through grade
school.
We spent mornings and afternoons on schoolwork. I worked hard,
because that was the price of freedom. It was either that or having
to go to school as a boy. But in addition, Mom discovered that she
loved teaching me, because, she said, she was learning so much
herself. Some things, like reading, writing, and arithmetic, one
uses all the time, but other subjects, like history and geography,
tend to fade with time, and Mom loved learning these subjects anew
and in greater depth than when she had been a girl. And her own
enjoyment showed in her teaching and made me enjoy them, too.
Part of what she was supposed to teach me was some kind of
performing art, and for this she chose singing and dancing. She
wanted me to be able to dance like a girl, and she thought dance
training would help me learn to move like a girl in other ways
(although, under Mom's vigilance, I was beginning to be good at that
anyway).
She had an ulterior motive in having me sing, too: she wanted me to
develop a girl's voice if I could. It's true that the difference is
more in mannerisms and vocabulary than in pitch and she wanted to
get a feminine way of speaking firmly in place as soon as possible.
But she thought that singing would make me conscious of how I used
my voice and get me into the habit of controlling it. She thought
it would be good for me to start this early, before my voice changed.
My vocabulary changed, too, because girls use different words for
many things. For example, I decided right away that from now on Mom
was going to be Mummy, and I never again called her Mom.
Mummy decided that my handwriting should be more feminine, too.
This was a tough job, and we labored over it for months, because
young boys don't have as good control over their fingers as young
girls have, and my writing was sloppy. Mummy wanted it to be neat
and rounded, with little circles over the i's instead of dots.
I hated this work, but I kept at it, because I was beginning to
appreciate that the secret of feminizing myself was going to be
lots of tiny details.
I had a sort of dirty blonde hair, and as Jenny gradually began to
take over from Jimmy, we let it grow to shoulder length, and Mummy
started teaching me how to take care of it. Among my pictures from
that time is a portrait of me in long hair with little ribbons on
either side.
Mummy wanted a photographic record of this entire project. "If you
keep on being a girl, you're going to want these pictures so you'll
remember how you started out and how you looked then. And if you
don't keep on, I'm going to want these pictures as a way of
remembering the sweet little game we played for a while."
I already knew in my heart that, however sweet, this was no game,
and it was going to last longer than a while.
I remember when Mummy took that picture, because I was so pleased
when it came out. It showed nothing but my head and shoulders, so
although I was wearing a dress when she took it, you could only see
a touch of flowered fabric and a lacy collar.
But even so, I look like a girl in the picture. There is something
about the face. I think the way I thought about myself was showing
in my eyes. By the time she took that picture I was already
thinking of myself as a girl all the time. It was only when I took
baths (I had given up showering as too mannish) and when I put on my
panties in the morning that I was reminded that I was, biologically,
a boy.
And those reminders, I should say, began to grow irksome. My little
penis and balls reminded me of rough cotton underwear and rough boy
clothes I used to have to wear and, above all, of the terrible life
I had led as a boy. And as the years passed, I came to think of
them as the things that were preventing me from achieving complete
girlhood.
Mummy's schooling continued through all the grades. It was a happy
time. By her example, she taught me to love learning and to regard
our studies as a treat. And having seen the products of our public
schools, I think the instruction I got from Mummy was far superior.
So often she would find out what course materials they were using in
the public schools, look at them, shudder, and go off and find
better ones herself.
And her schooling in girlhood continued, too, but at a reduced
level, since it was getting to be second nature to me. After a year
of training, she judged that I could safely go out, and we would
take walks together afternoons. That gave me a chance to observe
other girls my age, study how they behaved, and adopt some of what
I saw myself. When I was ten, I started running errands for her--
getting some of the groceries and taking things to the cleaners.
IV.
Those were years of happiness and contentment. But when I reached
the age of 12, a new threat loomed on the horizon: Puberty.
Mom had explained to me about sex. With her usual thoroughness she
had gotten books from the library for me to read, but most of the
information came from her. I found out about babies, and about what
men did to beget them.
My first thought was how much I would like to be a mother. Mummy
didn't laugh when I told her this, bless her. But she did explain
that it was impossible, and she took me back to the books and the
anatomical drawings to show me why it was.
I wasn't satisfied. I might never be able to be a mother, but I
had no interest whatever in being a father. By this time I felt so
completely at ease as a girl (a rather pretty girl, I might add,
which helped a great deal) that I had come unconsciously to assume
that I was going to be a girl for the rest of my life. The thought
that I would grow a beard and that my penis would start to get
bigger filled me with dismay. I didn't want a bigger penis; I
wanted breasts.
The more I thought about this, the more upsetting it was, and I
started to brood over it. Life in those years was so sunny and
happy that I used to go about the house singing quietly as I did my
studying and my housework. But now, under this new threat, I was
more subdued days, and Mummy must have noticed that. And sometimes
at night I would cry into my pillow at the thought that my life as
a girl would come to an end. One evening after dinner, Mummy found
me silently weeping over my books.
"What's the matter, Dear?" she asked me. She seemed almost as
distressed as I was.
Having to say it out loud was too much, and I started to bawl.
Finally, I got it out: "I don't want to have to stop being a girl.
I don't want to be a father. I don't want to be a husband. And I
don't want to grow a beard. If I can't be a mother, can't I just be
an old maid?"
I smile, remembering the poor little girl-boy who said that he
wanted to be an old maid, but, as always, Mummy refused to laugh
at me.
"But, Dear, you were only going live as a girl temporarily, so you
wouldn't have to deal with other boys. It's bound to come to an end
sooner or later. What are you going to do in high school?"
"I don't want to go to high school," I said, sniffling. "Not if I
have to be a boy. I hate boys. I hate the idea of being a boy.
I don't want to be Jimmy, I want to be Jenny. Jimmy's *dead!*" I
started to cry uncontrollably again. "Four...years of happiness," I
wept, "...four years of being your little girl...and now...THIS!"
I pointed between my legs. "I wish that had never been there. I
wish it would just...shrink, or drop off, and leave me in peace."
By this time Mummy was weeping, too. But she calmed down before I
did, and she said, "It's not going to go away, Jenny. But...well,
let me see whether there's anything we can do. I don't want to hold
out any promises, but...well, let me just see."
I didn't know what she meant. But Mummy was the one sure thing
in my life, the one person who could heal all my wounds and solve
all my problems. She would think of something. She always did.
Clinging to that hope, I stopped crying and managed to get to sleep.
Two weeks later, Mummy announced that we were going to see a doctor.
The doctor was in a different town, and we had to take the bus to
get there. During the trip, Mummy was very mysterious; she didn't
say anything about where we were going or why. But she had the air
of someone with a happy secret, not a guilty secret.
When we got there, the doctor turned out to be a woman. "Dr
Madison, this is Jenny," Mummy said when we were seated in her
office.
Dr Madison--not her real name--was a middle-aged, gray-haired woman.
She had bedside manner in spades; I took one look at her and liked
her from that moment. She was warm and pleasant and inspired
immediate confidence. It struck me that this was the one other
person on earth I wouldn't mind knowing about Jimmy.
That was good, because she started asking me about Jimmy right away.
Gradually, very gently, she got me to tell her the same story I've
told you: about my miserable boyhood, about the experiment we had
tried, about how successful it had been, about how deeply I loved
being a girl.
"Jenny's having to face manhood now," Mummy put in, "and she's
distraught. I found her the week before last crying her eyes out,
and she said she wished she wouldn't have to be a man. That's why I
came to see you."
Dr Madison looked straight at me. She intended her remarks for
my mother, but she talked to me; this was typical of the way she
treated her patients: with respect as well as kindness. And she
never once called me Jimmy.
"Jenny, I don't know whether we can do much. Your body is going to
produce hormones, chemicals that affect the way you grow and the way
your body develops. Those will be male hormones and you will grow
up to be a boy, just as your mother's told you.
"Now, it's true that there is a procedure called hormone replacement
therapy. It means taking pills that replace the male hormones so
that their bodies become more like women's. In your case, because
you would be starting before adolescence the female hormones in the
pills would make you develop as a girl instead of a boy. Do you
understand me?"
Understand her!! My heart was pounding. Mummy had done it again,
pulled off one of her miracles, like the miracle of making me a
girl, the miracle of schooling me at home. And now she had found
this wonderful doctor. It must have shown in my eyes.
"But there's a problem, Jenny. You are still a minor, and the
law doesn't look kindly on people interfering with the natural
development of minors. There are laws that regulate just how much
we can do, and some of those laws would apply even if your mother
gave her permission."
"You mean the law wouldn't let you give me those pills? You mean,"
--I fought savagely to keep the tears back--"the law could condemn
me to live a life that I hate? You mean the law would deliberately
make me miserable? What kind of hateful law is that?
"I want those pills, Dr Madison, those...hormones. I am NOT going
to let the law or anybody else make me into a boy. If you won't do
it, I'll get a knife and *cut them off,* I swear I will!"
Mummy was aghast. "You don't know what you're saying, Jenny!"
"Perhaps she does know," Dr Madison replied. "Children often see
much more clearly than we give them credit for. And boys have been
known to mutilate themselves when they were in Jenny's position."
She went on. "All right. We won't give up right away, Jenny. But
whatever we do, we mustn't act in ignorance. So first, I want to
give you a complete physical examination, and I want to give you a
battery of tests to analyze your body chemistry as well as we can.
Then we can decide what, if anything, we can do, and try to lay out
a course of action. Therapy, if we can manage it. And I want you
to see a psychiatrist, so all of us will know just how deep-seated
your feelings are. Because if we did go outside the law--I'm not
saying we will, but if somehow, let's say, those pills were just
to happen to fall into your mother's hands--their effects would be
irreversible. You think now that that's what you want, don't you?"
"Irreversible...you mean, once you've changed me I can't change
back?"
"That's right."
"I *know* that's what I want. I'm a girl now, and my body's
threatening to change me back. That's why I was crying. I don't
want to be changed back. I want you to fix me so I can't ever
change back."
"That's what you think now," Dr Madison continued. "I need to be
assured that that's what you'll think after puberty. That's a big
change in your life, and we will need to know what to expect and how
to deal with it."
Now she turned to Mummy. "If we did this, it would be, frankly, an
experiment. I'm very reluctant to do anything to your daughter.
Tampering with young people's bodies is tampering with their lives.
In any case, I have no intention of doing anything until I have the
test results back and an evaluation from the psychiatrist. Then
we'll see.
"There's another detail. Usually we require that a patient live
full time as a girl for a year before we take any action. For
someone Jenny's age, I would want longer than that. But you say she
has been living full time for four years, so I think that may do.
I'll know better once I've heard from the psychiatrist."
In spite of Dr Madison's cautions and repeated warnings, I left her
office walking on air.
Dr Madison took care of the physical checkup that afternoon, except
for the hormone assays, which were going to be carried out by a lab.
But I had to stay in town for the interviews with the psychiatrist.
There were two of these, the second a day after the first. The
shrink took me through my childhood and my life before and after I
started dressing. He wanted to know when my father had died (when
I was four), how well I had known him (not very well), how well I
remembered him (just a face now), what my relations with Mummy were
like (wonderful in every way), what my relations with other boys had
been like (uniformly disastrous), and so on. Not surprisingly, we
talked a long time about my life as a girl. He had me stand and
walk around and sit down, and I silently blessed Mummy for the
training she had given me.
The third day found us back in Dr Madison's office. "The
psychiatrist thinks you would be a safe bet," she reported, "so the
question that remains is how your system would react to HRT."
"HRT?" I asked. "What's that?"
"Hormone replacement therapy," she said, "the treatment I outlined
Monday. Your tests indicate hormone levels that are normal for a
pre-adolescent boy. That suggests that if we intervene now, we
should be able to sidetrack altogether the male puberty process that
would normally start in a year or less and give you a girl's puberty
instead."
I can't tell you how happy this made me. Then there was the
question of how the proper hormones could be made available for me.
To protect the people who helped me at this crucial time, I'm not
going to give the details here; let's just say that Dr Madison
recommended a course of action that worked.
I was on my way! Dr Madison gave me my first shot of hormones as an
injection, saying, "You don't know what I'm doing or who did this to
you." I've never liked needles, and giving the blood sample for the
tests had been a torment, but I actually looked forward to being
stabbed by Dr Madison's needle full of hormones, I was so keen on my
transformation. Then she gave Mummy a list of the different kinds
of pills I would be taking from then on, together with instructions
for using them.
V.
I'll tell you right now that the experiment (if that's what it was)
with the hormones was a success. I may have been imagining things,
but it seemed to me that the hormones started working right away.
I've since read that it takes a week or two, so this may just have
been wishful thinking, but I could swear my nipples began to get
sensitive the very next day, and I thought I detected some breast
growth a couple of days after that.
Then Mummy came up with the logical solution: every Sunday night
before bedtime, she passed a tape measure around my breasts and
recorded the measurement, both after I had inhaled and after I had
exhaled. A month or so later it occurred to us to include other
measurements as well--height, waist, and especially hips. I still
have those figures, and I can see the way I gradually developed into
a real girl over the next three or four years. I grew breasts,
slowly, instead of a beard; my hips widened out naturally; my voice
never changed; and although my penis didn't shrink away to nothing,
the way I had hoped it would, at least it didn't show any unwelcome
signs of growth.
That was another of the good periods in my life. Just as my body
began to develop as a woman's body, I was also of an age to start
dressing as a woman instead of a little girl. For my thirteenth
birthday Mummy gave me my first garter belt and my first nylons.
I felt so grown up putting on nylons! At first, I wore them with
everything--dresses, skirts, even under jeans.
I wonder, do genetic girls appreciate their clothes as I did? Do
they take the same pleasure in silky, delicate underwear, in fluffy,
frilly dresses, in colorful fabrics, in ribbons and lace? Or is
wearing those wonderful things just part of the day's work to them?
For me it was a sensual delight, and getting dressed every morning
was a celebration of the clothes I put on and of my growing
femininity. I still don't take these lovely things for granted.
I remember once Mummy found a record of a song from an old musical
comedy. The song was "I enjoy being a girl." She bought it and
brought it home as a joke for both of us. We laughed, but that song
spoke to me. I learned it off by heart, and sometimes when I was
getting dressed, or maybe just doing homework or tidying up our
apartment, I would sing it softly to myself, "I adore being a girl."
Yes, I did wear jeans and a T-shirt occasionally, and sneakers, and,
thanks to Mummy's careful tutelage, I was as fully a girl in those
as I was in any dress. But the dresses were so lovely...! And the
fabrics themselves...has anybody ever noticed how nice and feminine
their names are? I used to get dreamy just thinking of their names
...cashmere...chambray...chenille...cretonne...lame'...organdy...
pique'...velvet...satin...tulle...tarlatan. And taffeta! ...what
ordinary, "normal" man ever has the opportunity, the good fortune to
wear taffeta? The poor sap would probably be embarrassed to tears.
It was the same with makeup. Mummy had to restrain me here because,
like most young girls, I tended to overdo it. But I would sit at my
vanity (yes, Jenny had a vanity in her room now) and imagine myself
like the lovely Myrrhina in a poem my mother used to quote, who sat
at her vanity
With eyelids closed as soft as the breeze
That flows through gold flowers on the incense trees.
The only problem was that when I closed my eyes, I couldn't see the
effect of the eye shadow I had put on.
The hormones had another effect on me: I started noticing boys.
I had never had any even remotely gay tendencies before that, and
although I'll never know for sure, I don't think I would have if
I had had to grow up as a boy. But now I was turning into a
thoroughly heterosexual girl, and suddenly I began to notice things
about boys, things I liked to look at. Their lean flanks. Their
arms. Their shoulders. Their butts. The little lump--and
sometimes not so little--in the front of their jeans. The denim
tended to wear in that spot, and as a result that interesting area
was always graced by a little highlight. And I liked to watch the
slight unconscious swagger that that lump seemed to put into their
walk, on every one of them, even the wimpiest--so different from my
own feminine walk, which by now was second nature.
The plan was for Mummy to continue homeschooling me until my junior
year in high school, but my development went faster than Dr Madison
had anticipated, and I started going to the public high school in
my sophomore year. The first thing we found out was that I was in
advanced standing in nearly every subject. Don't tell me home-
schooling doesn't work! By this time also, Mummy's lawyer had
managed to get my birth certificate and other records changed from
James (male) to Jennifer (female). He regarded this procedure with
prim and stiff-lipped disapproval, but Mummy could be very emphatic
when her mind was made up, and he ended up having to carry out our
wishes.
With me in high school and no more homeschooling to do, Mummy took
a job. The medical bills had been high and we had had to retrench;
Mummy's administrative skills soon had her earning a nice salary and
we were living better than ever before.
In high school, I started dating boys. I was delighted not to be a
boy myself, but nevertheless I found the creatures fascinating. I
liked the hardness of their bodies and the way they looked at me.
I liked kissing them, and I liked to watch their lips when they
talked. I liked another kind of hardness, too, as I found out the
first time I put my hand inside a boy's pants. I couldn't let him
into my pants, of course, because of what he'd find there (rats!),
but I fell back on the old time-of-the-month excuse and had a grand
time giving him a blow job--my first ever. A penis was a splendid
thing, I decided, as long as it wasn't on my body.
VI.
I finished high school as Jenny, and I started college as Jenny. I
applied for, and got, a scholarship that was generous enough that we
would actually be able to get some money ahead. And then, the first
Summer after my eighteenth birthday, I told Mummy I wanted to finish
the job.
"What do you mean, Dear?" she asked. I think she knew.
"I mean I want surgery. I don't need these things--" I pointed
between my legs--"I don't like them, and I want to get rid of them.
I want to be a woman, not a chick with a dick."
After a phone conference with Dr Madison, I took the bus to see her
and we talked. I said that I wished she could have done this right
away when I was still a boy. She said it would have been out of the
question at that age and that the hormones had been a risky enough
proposition.
"But I'm eighteen now," I said. "I'm legally an adult and I'm past
my adolescence."
"You're past most of it," she corrected. But she had no strong
objection. "Do you want me to do the surgery?"
"Yes, Dr Madison, I want you especially. It isn't just because
you're the top surgeon in this field, although that's important,
of course. It isn't just because you're a woman and that it would
mean a lot to me to have such an operation performed by a woman.
But you're a friend, someone who has already saved my life once,
and you're the one person I would trust."
She consented, and we scheduled a tentative date: July 20, which
would now be Jenny's birthday in yet another way.
"There's one request I have. Can you do the surgery under a local
anaesthetic? I would like you to do that and rig a mirror. I want
to watch the operation. I want the satisfaction of seeing you
cut them off."
She gave me a surprised look. "No, Jenny, I'm afraid I can't do
that. You have to be out cold, under general anesthesia. And you
know, it isn't just a matter of taking a scissors and going snip-
snip-snip. It's a very long and very complicated operation. I not
only have to remove things; I have to give you a vagina as well, and
there's a lot of...well, heavy construction, and rewiring...that has
to be done."
I was sorry to hear this. I had had my heart set on watching myself
being...castrated, I guess I should say. I asked her whether she
could at least videotape the operation, and she got a little huffy
and said this wasn't just a fun thing for home movies. So I let the
matter drop. I did cajole her into giving me an advance look at the
operating room, however, although only a glimpse through a window.
I saw the operating table and the stirrups above it, and I thought,
with a thrill, "MY legs are going to be in those stirrups!"
My last memory before the surgery was riding down the hall on my
gurney to the operating room, caroling out at the top of my voice,
"I enjoy being a girl!"
VII.
After the operation, Dr Madison reminded me of my request to watch.
"I couldn't arrange that, as I explained. But I understand why you
wanted that. So I saved your testicles and what's left of your
penis, if you want to see them now."
"No," I told her--rather brusquely, I'm afraid. "I'm sorry you
bothered. I spent all my life seeing them. I'm sick of seeing
them. I wanted to see them come off, but I don't want to see them
again. Ever. Throw them in the garbage. That's all they're fit
for."
That was a year and a half ago. Things went pretty smoothly
after the surgery. And dilation was, after a couple of painful
experiences right at the beginning, a dream. Another advantage of
being a TS: having to stick a dildo up your vagina, under doctor's
orders! I've never heard of a doctor ordering a man to play with
his penis on a regular basis.
I had my first man--oops, no; that's not the way to put it--I was
had by my first man about six months ago.. It was only our second
date, but he was urgent, and I thought, why not? Am I an easy lay?
Jenny round-heels? I suppose I am; if all the other men in my life
turn out to be as much fun as he was, I'm sure I will be.
****
So that's my story. I never dedicated it when I started writing it;
let me dedicate it now. To my three dearest friends in the world:
Mummy, Dr Madison, and my nice, new, pretty vagina.
Princess Pervette
February, 1997